Spam (junk email) filtering in Debian GNU/Linux

Chris Lale

       chrislale@users.sourceforge.net

      

Revision History
Revision 0.123 January 2004Revised by: cl
Initial release

This document describes how to deal with spam on a typical home computer with a dialup (ppp) Internet connection. It focuses on using evolution as an email client. evolution is a graphical groupware suite which includes good email client with filtering abilities. The setup described in this document is known to work with Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (Woody) versions of evolution (1.0.5-1), mail (8.1.2), exim (3.35-1), fetchmail (5.9.11-6), procmail (3.22-5) and spamassassin (2.20-1woody).

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. What is spam?
1.2. What can you do about spam?
1.3. Email software components
1.4. Mail on a Debian system
1.5. Outline of the installation
1.6. Information you need before you start
1.7. Names used in this document
2. evolution- email client providing the mail user agent (MUA)
2.1. About evolution
2.2. Install evolution
2.3. evolution's 'Inbox' folder
2.4. Configure evolution to send mail to and retrieve mail from a remote server
2.5. Test evolution's configuration
3. eximand procmail
3.1. About exim - mail transport agent
3.2. About procmail - mail delivery agent
3.3. Local mail
3.4. .forward file
4. fetchmail - mail-retrieval and forwarding utility
4.1. About fetchmail
4.2. Install fetchmail
4.3. Configure fetchmail
4.4. Test fetchmail
5. fetchmaildaemon - run fetchmail in the background
5.1. About the fetchmail daemon
5.2. How to invoke the fetchmail daemon
5.3. Configure the fetchmail daemon
6. spamassassin
6.1. About spamassassin
6.2. procmailand spamassassin
6.3. Local mail
6.4. Putting it all together
7. What next?
A. Appendix: About this document
A.1. Copyright information
A.2. Latest version
A.3. Bugs, errors and mistakes
A.4. Spelling, punctuation and grammar
A.5. Conventions used in this document
A.6. Bibliography
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